This painting was long attributed to Caravaggio himself despite its being initialled “GBC”, the monogram with which Battistello used to sign his work. The use of a support made of the kind of hempen sacking favoured by Caravaggesque painters in Naples appears to indicate that it was painted in that city, yet its links with paintings by Battistello now in northern Italy suggest that
the picture was then sent north, possibly to Genoa where his work was much prized and where he himself resided for a time.